The power of the simple things...

My grandmother once told me about a philosopher that had a theory that the world is just the things that you can see in front of you. It means that immediately after you start staring at something else all things behind you, for example, doesn’t exist anymore. It can be viewed as a very selfish theory, but I tried to get the best of it to understand that our world is really small.

In my life I always believed on the power of the simple things – the things that you can do in your world. It has a lot to deal with many things that happened in my life and the experiences that I had. Some of the most interesting, I can also invite you to enjoy. Those happened when I was seeing some true stories in movies.
The ones that carved me a stamp were: “Patch Adams”, “Music Within”, “Civil Action” and the last one and that inspired me to write this post “Freedom Writers”. And not being a real story, the classic “Pay It Forward”. Well, if I keep saying names of movies, as a completely addicted person... I could use more than one blog.

What does people did was basically stare at their world and do not accept the reality that they had in front of them. And for that, they didn’t use of a very wide and complex set of things, but simple and impactful things: intelligence, creativity, persistence, great will...

When I was running for the national directory of AIESEC in Brazil I wanted to tell this for the people. “Dudes! We don’t have to come up with complex things... let’s make it simple and ensure results.” To do not look like it was a too crazy theory, I looked forward some “endorsement”. And I found it. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci – the most brilliant person that that ever passed through Earth for me... and “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein the person that the rest of the Earth recognized as the most brilliant one... :D

Those things always inspired me. In all of my actions I have in mind to always achieve the biggest impact with the simplest actions. And I really don’t like some people’s behaviour that doesn’t believe in this power. When it is for the negative perspective, it is easier for people to see how simple things can be impactful: shooting another person. With one bullet, one weapon and one will many people in this world ruined their lives and the ones of so many other people.

So, we come back to one of the principle that I also always take with... the Spider-Man principle :D “Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.” And it makes the whole sense because the power of doing simple things can be extremely powerful.

And how the hell does it impacts my life? All the times when I get to know these stories – through movies, books, conversations, whatever... I get so anxious about my future. Will I be able to do the great things that I want to do for the world? Which are going to be the simple things that I will be able to do to impact positively the others life? How big will be my range? Will I give up of all in a short while?

Those questions makes me reflect a lot about my future. But also and more importantly they make me reflect about the present. It’s like a checklist of my duties regarding the simple and powerful things. Am I smiling enough? Am I getting to know the people’s name? How many chocolates did I gave for people with no specific reason this month? How many emails did I sent for old friends just to tell how I am doing and how them how is it going? How many smiles am I being able to put in the others’ face? How many times did I offer some people to cook for them this month? How often am I using the words: "thank you" and "please"?

How would you be your checklist? By the certainness that it wouldn’t be composed by: “How many advanced math solutions did I developed in my life?” “The cure for how many diseases did I find this year?” “How many life changing movies did I produced in this month?”

I hope people are going to be kept doing great things. Like Einstein did with the E = MC2 or Leonardo da Vinci did when he created the first drafts of the helicopter, the hot air balloon, Mona Lisa... all around 500 years ago. But as much as I want people to keep doing this, I want them to keep smiling, giving free chocolates, hugging each other... saying: “I love you”.

Well, I feel happy after all to have those feeling to start 2009. I hope with my simple actions I will keep people cheered up for the long road :D

As well, I hope this post is making it somehow.

Trailer of the movie: "The freedom writers"